1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments disclosed herein generally relate to processing a substrate in an etch chamber.
2. Description of the Related Art
A chip manufacturing facility is composed of a broad spectrum of technologies. Cassettes containing semiconductor substrates are routed to various stations in a facility where they may be processed or inspected. Semiconductor processing generally involves the deposition of material onto and removal of material from substrates. Typical processes include chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), electroplating, chemical mechanical planarization (CMP), etching, and others.
One concern regarding substrate processing is substrate throughput. Generally, the greater the substrate throughput, the lower the manufacturing cost and therefore the lower the cost of the processed substrates. In order to increase substrate processing throughput, batch processing chambers have been developed. Batch processing allows several substrates to be processed simultaneously using common fluids (such as process gases), chambers, processes, and the like, thereby decreasing equipment costs and increasing throughput. Ideally, batch-processing systems expose each of the substrates to an identical process environment whereby each substrate simultaneously receives the same process gases and plasma densities for uniform processing of the batch. Unfortunately, the processing within batch processing systems is hard to control such that uniform processing occurs with respect to every substrate. Consequently, batch processing systems are notorious for non-uniform processing of substrates. To achieve better process control, single chamber substrate processing systems were developed to conduct substrate processing on a single substrate in a one-at-a-time-type fashion within an isolated process environment. Unfortunately, single chamber substrate processing systems generally are not able to provide as high a throughput rate as batch processing systems, as each substrate must be sequentially processed.
Therefore, there is a need for a substrate processing system configured to provide controllable etch uniformity of a single substrate system and improved throughput characteristics of a batch processing system.